The Mountain Sun family of brewpubs[3] has always stood out on the local beer scene for its laid-back vibe, affordable prices and a dizzying number of beers on the chalkboard.

After clearing zoning and other planning hurdles, Mountain Sun finally opened a long-planned flagship brewhouse at its Vine Street Pub and Brewery[4] in Denver this spring, giving it far more volume and a more efficient system to keep the taps flowing.

Mountain Sun was part of the first wave of craft beer growth in Colorado, opening a six-barrel brewery on Boulder’s Pearl Street in 1993. Nine years later, Southern Sun opened on the south side of Boulder with a 10-barrel operation.

The plan was always to install a brewing operation at Vine Street, which opened on 17th Street in the Uptown neighborhood in 2008, said Paul Nashak, managing partner for Mountain Sun.

The company bought the entire block, including a Victorian house one lot north of the pub.

The new brewery is in space directly behind the pub, which used to be home to a dingy bar called the Rhino Room. The space today is bright and airy: gleaming stainless steel tanks, white subway tiles, light streaming in from clear-story windows.

The 12-barrel brewhouse features new equipment and some bought from a closed Rock Bottom in greater Cleveland. This is the workhorse of the Mountain Sun group, where the eight flagship brews available at all three locations are made: Colorado Kind Ale, XXX Pale Ale, Isadore Java Porter, Annapurna Amber, Blackberry Wheat, Quinn’s Golden Ale, Illusion Dweller IPA, and FYIPA.

Those beers account for 70 percent of sales, said Nashak, who started off as a cook at Mountain Sun and helped open Southern Sun. That roster would be more than enough for many breweries, but not at Mountain Sun. Nashak said the company brews 60-plus varieties of beer per year, “unheard of in this industry because it’s super hard and inefficient.”

There are always 21 Mountain Sun beers on tap at each pub and room for guest handles, too.

The very first beer produced on Vine Street was a special one: Number One, a 9 percent Belgian tripel with golden naked oats and Belgian candy sugar. That was an exception, though: The more experimental beers will be brewed in Boulder.

At any given time you might find at any of the pubs a number of different saisons (one features chocolate and pink peppercorns), a hop-heavy stout, a wheat beer with lemongrass and ginger, or a Belgian-style ale aged in a petite Syrah barrels.